


the years between

by binkabonkahankeydoo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Nine/Rose - Freeform, Oneshot, also apparently its sort of cannon?, anyway this just a little scribble, doctor who series 1 episode 1, please accept my measly offerings, recently rewatched season one and thought of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 00:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19800625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binkabonkahankeydoo/pseuds/binkabonkahankeydoo
Summary: She says no, and something wilts inside him.Rose - 01x01





	the years between

She says no.

She says no, and something wilts inside him.

_Hope_ , he realizes somewhat distantly.

And something else.

Something new. Something soft. Something _warm_ that had blossomed within him; grown so quickly in his hearts that he hadn't even noticed its presence but, oh, how keenly he feels its absence, thick like bile sitting at the back of his tongue.

"Okay," he says, swallowing down hard against the lump in his throat; the decaying remnants of his hope threatening to rise up, threatening to consume him.

He'd known that she might say no when he'd asked her. Sometimes they said no.

But by god, she was the first person in two hundred years who'd made him want to see the stars again, and he'd had to ask.

And until she'd actually said it, until that word had fallen from her mouth, that simple but all-encompassing 'no', he'd not realized that he'd let himself believe. That he'd let himself _hope_.

He doesn't want to leave her here, in this dusty back alley.

He wants to disappear into the sky with her by his side, to hold her hand and whisper, " _run_." He wants to see her smile and hear her laugh and touch her golden hair.

He wants to feel the warmth she brings, the kindness, the new energy; the curiosity and fervor for life.

The _humanity_.

But she said no.

He hadn't expected it to hurt so much.

She said no, and his hearts had clenched.

She made her choice, and he'd respect that, despite the tightness in his throat and the static in his ears.

He's the doctor, and he doesn't ask twice.

Even if maybe he'd like to.

"See you around," he says, though he knows he won't, and he steps back into the Tardis, drinking in every last second of her face that he can before he pulls the door shut behind him with a resounding thud.

And he leaves her.

The days turn into weeks into months into years, time slurring together in the Tardis, in the past, in the future. The universe spins around him, the next great adventure blurring into the next, into the next, into the next.

He runs far, he runs fast.

But he just can't shake her.

She haunts him, her figure like a ghost in the night when he closes his eyes, her smile lingering in his mind, keeping him from drifting to sleep. She's everywhere he goes, and she's everything he thinks about.

He'd thought he was better at leaving people behind by now, for surely he would be after all these years of leaving, and being left, but apparently not.

The years have worn on him, always on the move, always running from one place to the next, never stopping, tearing loneliness driving him to the edge; of insanity, of cruelty, of desperation.

The war, now a million years past, rages always within him, never quiet, never gentle, and he can feel it; all his decisions and thoughts and actions becoming tainted by it, slowly saturating his mind and his hearts, until he's not sure who he even is anymore.

A fury burns within him, but there's also fear, and pain, and more than anything, the crushing guilt; the all-encompassing loneliness of being the last of his kind.

And he finds himself on a precipice. He can't feel the turn of the world anymore, it all feels stale and stagnant to him. He's lost sight of everything he is; everything that's good in the universe.

Except her.

After so long, it still comes back to her. She's all that he seems to want, a light in the darkness that smothers him.

The whole of space and time, of anyone and anything, and it's her that calls to him. He doesn't understand why. Perhaps he never will.

And so he does something he's never done before.

He asks again.

"By the way," he says, sticking his head out the door, mere seconds from when he left her last.

She turns to him, and something stirs deep within him. She's just as beautiful as he remembers.

"Did I mention that it also travels in time?"

She smiles then, a soft, barely there sort of smile, and he feels it again, after so, so long. The rush of her presence, the warmth in her eyes, the hope she gives to him, and he slides back into the Tardis before he can give himself away, his eyes surely shining with moisture.

Her footsteps precede her, and he can barely contain the swell of his chest when she appears in the doorway, tongue between her teeth, smile lighting up the whole room.

She'll never know just how long he waited for her.

But he'd wait that long again, for even just a second more with her.

And his world starts turning again.


End file.
